


for daws to peck at

by astronicht (1Boo)



Series: a dukedom large enough [2]
Category: Tortall - Tamora Pierce
Genre: Daine and Numair learning to be bros, Gen, Medieval Spies, Past Relationship(s), Politics, Prostitution, Spies & Secret Agents
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-05-28
Updated: 2018-07-03
Packaged: 2019-05-14 17:28:19
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 13,010
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14774009
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/1Boo/pseuds/astronicht
Summary: It was autumn, and Numair Salmalin had not acted like a spy since the very beginning of the spring, when the snow was still melting on the northern mountains, and Onua Chomtang had just found Veralidaine Sarrasri at Cria, capital of Galla, and delivered her south.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> "But I will wear my heart upon my sleeve  
> For daws to peck at. I am not what I am”  
> ― William Shakespeare, Othello
> 
> Directly follows A Dukedom Large Enough, but will be a bit longer. Also, I've now read Tempests & Slaughter and yelled about it thoroughly on twitter. There won't be any overt spoilers in here, but there will be a few references. Let me know if they're too spoiler-y and I'll put a better warning up! 
> 
>  
> 
> I read this over but super exhausted, apologies for any stupid mistakes. If anyone wants to beta at any point, I'm all ears.

No one had given Numair Salmalin a student before. When a student happened to him - and that was probably how he would put it, if asked - he had never seen a dragon. When he saw a dragon, no one had ever put an infant in his hands and said, “Watch her for me, please.” When Daine handed him Kitten one morning a week after the myrrh incident had come to its close, Numair was starting to accept that his life was mirroring his universe: holes were being punched through it, and wonderful and terrible things were falling in.

After waving off Daine and Cloud, who were escaping into the woods like exhausted parents quite excited to have found a passable nanny, Numair had a fit of optimism. He thought (and said aloud to Kitten, because no one was around to judge him) that a lot of great changes must be on the horizon.

He was mostly right.

***

Autumn came to Tortall in earnest and King Jonathan of Conte remembered that Numair Salmalin was not some court magician and was not a teacher, at least not in terms of the realm. Numair Salmalin had been recruited as and remained a tool, and among his services as a tool he was what some would call a spy. He spoke five languages, he’d lived in three different countries, and quite simply he was too useful to be let go, not when he’d been so well and so personally trained by the king, the queen, _and_ the spymaster of Tortall. As personal friends they would probably try to let him escape it; as politicians they would have trouble.

But Numair didn’t really mind - or he hadn’t. Life had just become...more complicated this year, and he was not just talking about the Kraken, and those mages on the ships who might’ve once been his teachers, sent like pirates and tearing holes in the sky.

There were also new and delightful complications: this year he seemed to have acquired a baby dragon, and a Daine.

It was autumn, and autumn meant raiding season was ending. From the Yamani islands to Scanra, down to the shores of Carthak, ships went to harbor. Even the temperate Copper Isles would be bathed in the rainy season, their seas frothed up with the afternoon thunderstorms.

It was autumn, and Numair Salmalin had not acted like a spy since the very beginning of the Spring, when the snow was still melting on the northern mountains, and Onua Chomtang had just found Veralidaine Sarrasri at Cria, capital of Galla, and delivered her south.

Not since, to be blunt, he’d ended his last mission with the mark escaping, his being imprisoned, being poisoned, panicking, turning into a bird, being poisoned more as he now had the body weight of a bird, and nearly being killed by Stormwings (but mostly by his own stupidity), only to be rescued by a thirteen-year-old whose type of magic on which he had written his Mastery thesis. This was not exactly how Numair wanted to _end_ his career, but it also didn’t make him want to pick it back up again.

It had been a very, very long summer, however.

When the hoofbeats sounded in the distance he thought at first that it might be Daine and Cloud back early, but crossing quickly to the window and pushing open one damp shutter, keeping one eye on Kitten, he saw a messenger in Jon’s colors at a quick trot through the trees.

With a sigh he eyed Kitten, and decided she was going to make the trip with him.

When he met the messenger on the ground floor, the poor girl was met with the staring eyes of a baby dragon who ran up to her and tried to climb the leg of her riding kit. Numair didn’t blame her exactly for jumping back, but he thought maybe Kitten looked sad about it. He reached to pick her up and was surprised when the whole heavy weight of her slithered quickly into his arms, head under his chin, suddenly shy.

The messenger was a thin girl with some Bazhir features, and looked about seventeen at most, but she wore Jon’s personal crest of his inner household and was professional enough to recover fairly quickly. It was possible, Numair thought wryly, that she had somewhat expected Numair Salmalin to be up to something wizardly and terrible and was merely resigned to visual proof. Not that Kitten was in any way terrible - maybe _a_ terror, sometimes - and not that he was doing anything stranger than trying to be a good nanny, but.

Anyhow, she placed a wad of sealed letters in his hand. He recognized several of them - one had a matching crest from Jon, one from Onua, several small ones from palace-people decorated like invitations. It was the one with the plain, cheap wax seal that interested him.

He took them all and smiled at her. The Bahzir girl did not return it, but she did say, “Your familiar appears to be a wyrm, Mage Salmalin.”

“She’s a dragon,” Numair said, sliding a protective hand over Kitten, who chirruped and snuggled closer. He tried not to look thrilled; she normally would be wrapped up in Daine. “A baby dragon.” All he got in return was an arched eyebrow.

He flipped the messenger a tip which disappeared quickly into a pocket hidden along the line of her belt.

“I thank you for your service and offer you lodgings for the evening,” Numair told her formally. It was standard when receiving a messenger from someone of higher rank, but Numair had slept rough enough times that he meant it. Her eyes narrowed just a fraction, likely judging whether or not to accept lodging from the strange foreign mage in the strange tower with the strange Immortal currently snuffing at his hair. “My apprentice Veralidaine and I would be happy to hear the news from the capital,” he added. Daine wouldn’t really give a jot, but naming another female presence did the trick for tipping the messenger’s wary calculations of his intent, and she accepted politely if not enthusiastically.

Numair apologized for his lack of housekeeper and hostler, but of course she was fine putting her horse in the barn with Spots and Mangle, and seeing Cloud’s empty stall enquired warily, “Is Apprentice Veralidaine expected back for supper?”

“She has assured me so,” he said. He couldn’t take offense; he had lived in places and ways that had made him also wary of strange men alone, motives uncertain. Jon might have been offended if Numair mentioned his messenger’s caution; Jon sometimes assumed that if he trusted someone, his household would of course have no reason not to follow suit.

Numair managed to get the messenger settled in a guest room mid-tower, with a good view of the treetops and the fire already lit and roaring in the grate, a basin of water to clean off the worst of the dust from the road, and a pitcher cold from the well to drink.

Technically it was Daine’s job as an apprentice to wait on any guests. It didn’t really come up much, and Numair hardly minded.

“The kitchen and pantry is just above you; please help yourself to any food and drink you find.”

He felt a little keenly the awkwardness in not having any staff at all. Maybe he should hire another cook.

The messenger stared him out of the room, and he meekly went.

Kitten at his heels, he retreated up to his rooms. The message scrolls he threw in the general direction of a low table, but kept the one with Jon’s seal, and the plain one. With a huff he threw himself down in front of the hearth, and Kitten flowed into his lap, begging for attention. He put an arm around her and broke both seals quickly, studied the contents coolly.

He suspected that in all these months Daine hadn’t really thought about what that hawk man, Arram Draper alias Numair Salmalin, had been doing to be hunted by Stormwings. Onua had said she’d given Daine the briefest explanation she thought she could get away with, and that it had not sounded very plausible. But then again, well, Daine wasn’t always very interested in politics. Of course, she also hated being left out.

He thought about that for a minute, and about those two halves of the tower, his up and her down. Hated being left out, was she being left out? She lived there, didn’t she? Chose to. Did she feel cut off, left out?

He was always going to be like this, wasn’t he? Self conscious, gods.

Numair huffed and sprawled backwards on the rug, his hair frothing out around his head. Numair was twenty-three and he’d actually been beginning to figure his life out. He was twenty-three and he was a _good spy_. Well, perhaps it didn’t come naturally the same way it did George (and Alanna was pretty sneaky when it came down to it) and even Daine - well no, not Daine. Daine had many talents; subversion was not really one of them.

Thinking about it, he almost started to wonder if Alanna really was a spy too, just a spy that was so obvious that no one really thought about it. She had lived as a boy for years, hadn’t she? And fooled everyone, nearly. Numair had gotten a few pieces of that story and found nearly all of them highly amusing.

(Except that he’d spent enough of his own time hiding who he was that he very much suspected that Alanna edited heavily to keep to humor. Of course, Numair Salmalin _was_ who he was now. Arram Draper would always be part of him but not who he was. Not anymore. Probably, not ever again.

Daine was the first person to always, always call him Numair. It felt like a spell; like a weight wrapping around his center, steadying. She knew he had once been Arram, but to her he was Numair.)

A tangent, damn, he thought, staring at the way light glistened on Kitten’s shifting scales, her little silver claws, his own feet in socks he’d messily darned himself. He’d always been better on paper than aloud, or gods forbid, in his own head.

He didn’t want to go back to being Arram Draper, and the fact that he couldn’t was nothing but comforting, now. A lot of people might have regretted it, he thought, or felt nostalgia. Oh there were moments where he wouldn’t mind living again, moments of sheer freedom, power, sensuality. The first time he walked on the ocean floor. The first time he flew, obviously. Gods, gods. All the times.

Unbidden, too, other times came to his mind; that soft voice, those liquid brown eyes, “My little bird, yes, my little bird,” and in the distance, Varice’s laughter from the bedsheets.

He shook himself; Kitten started and stared at him like he was an imbecile.

But anyway, he was well situated to be a spy. It was his profession in this country, and in a way his price. The price of belonging in Tortall. The give and take of it, between himself and the crown, himself and this country of contradictions.

He was not actually the sort of man you wanted to harbor, useful or no. Emperor Ozorne was not actually the sort of man you wanted to anger by harboring someone who was, after all, just one man. Just one man, sure with more magic than anyone would know what to do with, but still just a man versus a country; a people.

He hoped, deep down, that it was merely more of Ozorne’s standard sabre-rattling that had lead the suspiciously well-equipped pirates up the coast - oh and look here, in his letter Jon had had George draw up a whole report on the Swoop attack, lovely. Numair squinted hard and read between the lines, hoped it wouldn’t come down to himself, a personal vendetta spurred by wounded pride. That the attack had been on the Swoop, his known stomping grounds, did not escape him.

The point stood that Ozorne was the sort of man who would start a war because a boy would no longer suck his cock. Who cared what powerful friends that boy made?

Numair sighed and lit a small fire a hands-width above the rug for tea. The hearth was too far and Kitten had not yet figured out how to tattle on him.

His Gift of course, lit the fire, and it remained in his colors - that black, black fire. In his own home, he’d become used to being able to boil water with pure Gift without anyone judging. Most people were a little perturbed by this, if they caught him at it. Daine had never once blinked at it. Perhaps she hadn’t been around enough mages, strong mages, to know it was odd to be able to burn power like that. Alanna could if she’d wanted to, but she didn’t want to.

Of course, Alanna had other strengths. Numair however, was an instrument, a tool; a conduit. A wand, the staff through which the magic moved. That was the joke, right? In Tortall he had learned to be useful.

The second letter hung limply in his hand.

He remembered when he grew. He’d shot up, growing and growing, and he felt completely off balance, he still did sometimes, and it had been what, almost ten years now? He’d been this size since he was about fifteen. He was still growing when he met Varice and Ozorne. That was when they were the only ones who weren’t afraid of him, maybe, though he hadn’t recognized the fear for what it was until he was much older. They thought of him as a precious thing, cute. _My little bird._

He grew taller than them quickly, but with them had remained - he didn’t know, contained, small in ways he wasn’t physically, small in ways it wasn’t unpleasant to be.

Kitten chirped at his little fire. Numair smiled at her, his cheek still mashed into the rug.

He would have to tell Daine about the letter - the one with the plain seal. He would have to tell Daine _something_ anyway. He didn’t think he could leave her at the tower alone, and he’d prefer not to leave her at the Swoop like, like so much baggage - though she was never alone, ever. Better to say he didn’t want to be alone, because he definitely _could_ be alone, unlike her. He did not have bats roosting in the star jasmine outside his window. He was not the reason a family of badgers had moved into the woodshed.

Relatedly, Numair could no longer use his own woodshed.

Numair was perfectly capable of being alone and perfectly capable of hating it. Additionally he was perfectly petulant enough to try to think of a way out of it.

One couldn’t really take one’s mage apprentice with them spying, but... _couldn’t they?_ Was there anything he truly couldn’t do?

(The answer was a definitive yes, for certain, you fucking idiot. He’d learned that a long time ago. Even men who could walk through walls found a trap they couldn’t spring, eventually)

Kitten did a funny little whistle-click noise at his fire. It was cute. He patted her absently, traced the curling pattern on the carpet.

He’d crashed and burned into this place.

If it hadn't been for Onua and Alanna and Jon, he would still be crashing and burning. That was if he was lucky. Otherwise it would’ve been just: he crashed and burned, full stop. End of sentence.

Numair Salmalin stillborn.

Before he could make up his mind how to say it, how to phrase it, and what to say exactly (Jon and George unhelpfully hadn’t specified how much Daine could know) Daine herself appeared breathless at the top of the stair. He was so lost in thought that he did not hear her tread approaching - and here he was thinking what a great spy he was! And in truth he was a mage who knew courtly manners cheap players’ tricks.

Kitten trilled with delight at the sight of Daine and leapt off Numair’s stomach, which felt a bit like a gut-punch. He tried to wheeze quietly and sit up to look more like a reliable authority figure.

Daine had switched out of summer gear. She’d purchased her winter clothes with the Riders, with Onua’s help and taste. Though she wore trousers still, they were loose and almost Tyran style, maybe K’mir too, laced tight at her ankles and waist. On her feet were thick wool socks and embroidered slippers on top of those, against the cold stone of the tower.

Her tunic was about the same - she favored blue, perhaps. Her first things had all been red and brown, but now the blues and greens and grays slowly began to dominate. She might have good taste - or maybe Onua just did.

“What’s that?” Daine asked, Kitten scooped onto one hip and running her muzzle through Daine’s bushy hair. “Is it from Onua? I haven’t had a letter from her in two weeks. She and the 7th group were heading for Bazhir lands.” Numair was momentarily distracted.

“So the Bazhir are really letting the Riders in now?” he murmured. Kitten, tangled around Daine’s ankles, whistle-clicked and he reached across and stroked her. His magical fire was a little unruly; he gentled it out of existence, and set about pouring the tea. Kitten harrumphed at him and climbed Daine’s loose trousers like a Copper Isles tree cat.

“But the Bazhir are Tortallan, aren’t they?” Daine asked, sitting down cross-legged and eyeing the letters hungrily. “Why would they not let the Riders in?”

He began to shake his head no, but said yes, indicating the complication. “They were conquered by Tortallans shortly...before Alanna was born, I think? I’d need to check the exact date.” He sighed. “As such, it’s not even been an entire generation since the Bazhir became ‘Tortallan’. Onua’s group will be the first riders to enter Bazhir land, and they will probably be spending most of their time negotiating instead of bandit hunting.”

Daine laughed. “Oh, Miri will be bored!”

Numair felt himself smile without meaning to.

“Yes, she will,” he said, and huffed out a breath. He probably would have spent all the windy afternoon stewing about this if she hadn't just barged in. Thank Mithros.

“Listen, Daine, this letter is actually from George Cooper.” He held the one with the plain seal.

“Oh? How’s the Lioness and them?”

“And the rest,” he corrected gently. He didn’t really care about her accent or way of speaking, but it would be harder for her if she kept it. He wished she could keep it, in some ways. He wished she could continue to sound like who she was and where she was from.

He didn’t wish to sound like who he was and where he was from; he wasn’t sure why he wished it for her. She didn’t particularly like her origin story either.

He placed the letter down next to the tea, carefully folded. With a whisk he frothed the tea, and inhaled the scent of turmeric, let it soothe him. “Do you remember Daine, what I was doing when we met?”

“Dying, unfortunately,” Daine said. She was getting a little more bold in her way of speaking. He had been delighted the first time she’d said something in that dry tone of hers that sounded like teasing, if you squinted at it.

“Well, yes. I mean - no because, well. You.”

Daine shrugged, blushed a little. “Me’n Onua do our best.”

And it just happened, Numair mused, that Daine’s best was far beyond all of their wildest imaginations. Even then, barely thirteen, in a new country, afraid of tapping her full potential, because someone had told her - _idiots_ had led her to believe that it was madness she had, not sheer power. Mithros, Minos, and Shakith, if she had been taught correctly from an early age….

But of course, that was exactly why he was so loathe to leave her alone. Imagine Daine at the university as young as Arram Draper had been when he came. Imagine what they would have tried to teach her, assuming they were finally forced to confront a Wild Magic. Imagine where they could have succeeded.

Oh, it disgusted him that he even thought it, but something in Numair wanted her magic to overtake her, wanted her to know what it was like, the rush like a river in full flood, the sheer joy of it. But he wanted that as a faulty human being, not a teacher. He wanted - gods, he was so pathetic - he wanted from her a friend who would understand. He wanted someone who knew what it was to scream out at the universe and hear it yell back at you, feel it move with you.

Thoughts like this were definitely why the gods liked messing with him.

“Well,” said Numair, clearing his throat. He passed Daine a cup of spiced tea. “While I was a bird and we were on the road, I imagine it was all very...secretive. I can’t remember what you were told to be honest. I was...not in the best shape. But in short, I was doing some work for the crown.”

Daine frowned, sniffed her tea. “Onua seemed to think I wasn’t supposed to know about any of it.” She picked a hangnail, a nervous tell.

“You’re my apprentice now,” Numair said firmly. What he _meant_ was that he would now take the fall if this transgression became a problem, not that it was in his right as a Mage to tell his apprentice any state secret he so wished. It was just that his phrasing was vague. Perhaps deliberately.

The Hag would juggle his bones for this.

“Alright,” said Daine slowly. She kneeled across from him and pulled Kitten into her lap before she could overset the tea service. “You were imprisoned right? There was some noble, and he - fled to that one country to the south.”

“That’s right, Carthak.” Carthak being called ‘that one country to the south’ amused him greatly. He wished, a little bit, not truly but just a little bit, that Ozorne could have heard it when Numair could see his face. He took a deep breath.

“The noble’s name was Lord Synthia, and while he’s gone, the king wants me to check on his son, who lives on his late mother’s estate outside Port Caynn--”

“When do we go?” interrupted Daine, cutting quite simply across his hour or so of musing.

“In the morning,” he said finally, “If the weather is fine.”

***

Mid-morning found Numair sitting resigned on Spots, trailing behind as Daine on Cloud and the Bazhir messenger on her pretty mare pranced ahead of him, talking horses. He knew Daine was not a morning person; he felt a little betrayed by her sudden exuberance.

They took the coastal road through the hill country, and occasionally could watch the sea in the distance off great grassy bluffs, the wind keening in Numair’s ears. Daine bagged two rabbits for lunch and they stopped in a grove of pines sheltered between hills further inland where other travellers had left a small shrine and the remnants of a fire pit.

Daine went into the brush with Kitten to gather wood while Numair and the Bazhir messenger - whose name Numair still did not know, and he now felt too awkward to ask - skinned and gutted the rabbits. Numair was leaving a few coins for the Goddess on the little shrine when he heard the messenger say behind him, to Daine, “Here is the spit; can you light the fire?”

Something in her cadence made it obvious to Numair that she expected Daine to light it quickly and magically. And why should she not? She knew only that Daine was apprentice to the King’s favored mage. It was only an assumption people would continue to make.

More tellingly, he heard Daine’s silence, turned to see from the corner of his eye the set of her mouth.

He couldn’t see the firepit but he was aware of it; he could feel the tangle of copper fire in Daine, could sense the last pangs of life in the dry wood. Numair lit it quickly with an inwards breath, and the girls jumped back with a yelp.

“Happy to oblige,” he smilingly told the messenger girl, as if she’d been addressing him all along.

Daine’s face did not lift, Numair noticed, until they had talked of other things for the better part of an hour.

***

Numair had been able to feel a thunderstorm coming in his bones since he was too small to even know what his Gift was. He did not call to storms, anymore. He no longer was the sort of person to laugh and invite the lightning down. Maybe someday he would again, but as of yet that sort of thing belonged to Arram Draper, an ocean and a past away.

It did mean that he could show some practical foresight and direct Daine and the messenger into an inn for the night instead of sleeping rough. It was a simple sort of place, which meant that their party garnered stares from all directions, even with Daine hiding Kitten under her cloak as they passed through the barroom. Numair asked the innkeeper for two rooms, thinking the girls could perhaps bunk together. Maybe Daine missed the Riders a little bit, and the close companionship, even if she’d been there as a teacher, not a trainee.

He passed over the coins and ignored the innkeeper’s blatant staring as the woman categorized him as a Mage, a dark-skinned foreigner from the south, and a single young man travelling with two female youths, one of whom was both Bazhir in features and wearing the crest of the king.

Whatever her arithmetic was, it resulted in some very nice rooms, with views of the storm clouds boiling up off the sea.

As they ate supper in the corner of the main room furthest from what looked like local wedding festivities by the fire, Daine asked, “Numair, do I have a lesson tonight?”

The Bazhir girl regarded this with frank curiosity over her plate of oysters and root vegetables, like Daine was a fascinating puzzle she couldn’t quite solve.

Numair thought a moment, and replied, “Yes, come to my room after you’ve finished washing up.” He saw the messenger’s eyes narrow. “It’s too crowded in here, and we would almost definitely be considered an unwelcome distraction.”

Daine chuckled, but said in an oddly flat voice, “Well, it’s not as if it looks like I’m doing any real magic.”

Numair frowned; the messenger’s eyes flicked quickly back and forth, resting again on Daine’s face.

“If you can’t see it, perhaps you should work on your Sight,” Numair said lightly, with a wink to spread the tone that extra inch. As always, Daine was like a pillar of flame to his magical vision. He tapped her hand and let her borrow his vision, which was likely still brighter than hers. She flinched, then squinted at him.

“You look funny,” she said. “Like - like you’re falling up.”

Numair smiled ruefully, felt the edges of his Gift as it tried to trickle away, up into the sky, like he was seven again and leaking all over the place, heading to the clouds.

“Just the weather,” he said, and it wasn’t even a lie.

***

Daine knocked after it was full dark out, and proceeded to drip on his floorboards when he let her in. She’d obviously been with Cloud. Kitten stood up on her hind legs and chirruped at Numair, demanding, until he gently settled a warming spell on both of them.

It felt funny. He remembered with sudden clarity the rainy season in Carthak, when he would run into class soaked through and one of the kindly Masters would cast the same spell without barely looking up. An ocean away, he reminded himself. A whole lot of water between then and now.

“First,” Numair said, “We’ll meditate tonight. Then I have a two-part lesson for you, and it will be a bit different from what either of us is used to.” He smiled. “I humbly ask you to bear with me.”

Daine laughed, and under it thunder rolled out. Numair fancied it shook the glass in its iron frame.

“Ma used to tell me the thunder was giants rolling boulders down the mountains,” Daine murmured unexpectedly, and said it clear-eyed. It would take a few years to truly scab over, to heal as much as such things could, to scar as it would. But she was doing better, Numair thought.

Numair didn’t think she’d want attention drawn to that, especially with her mood over her magic today, so instead he said, with a gusty sigh, “And in these exciting times, that might just be possible! I will be on the lookout for giants on the road tomorrow.”

That startled another laugh out of Daine. She scanned the room - it was large, had a little sitting area equipped with a cheap copper kettle for tea and dainty cups, a wide feather-bed, and a clean hearth by which Numair’s robe was drying. There were two spindle-carved chairs with pillows on them, but Daine sat down on the hearth’s rag-rug like they were still in the tower. Numair sat on the edge of the bed, if only for the moment, if only to give himself a little space to think of what he needed to say. Kitten loped over to wind around his ankles like a cat.

“Your job as my student…” he began. He leaned back, gripped the quilt. “It is not necessarily political. Many mages, myself included, are happy with the only lands and titles to their names being the rows of the library and the names of the books. As a trained mage, you would eventually have a little collection of wealth and influence, enough to keep you comfortably distant from it all should you wish it. As an instructor with the Riders, you could also largely avoid the scheming, keep things hands-on.”

He paused. Kitten trotted back to Daine and Daine rain a hand over her scales, but kept her eyes on Numair, serious, listening. It was the sort of gravity she gave to healing; he wondered if she sensed his underlying unease. He wondered which part of tonight’s ‘lessons’ had him more worried, then gave it up.

“Alas, you’re _my_ student!” He aimed for joking and missed by half. “And I am in more direct service to the crown than even your average mage.”

“Like being at Lord Synthia’s castle, that time?” she asked. She was sharp, so sharp. He wondered just how often she would be underestimated due to her naivete, her accent.

“Yes,” Numair said. “And that involvement is to continue. As you saw this spring, this sort of thing can occasionally bring its hazards - I promise it is mostly boring, but it does. I believe as your teacher that you should have a basic understanding of the situation, and should you want more detailed information, you should be able to request it. I will also be able to decline.”

“Alright, Numair,” said Daine in what sounded like a comforting tone. She shoved her heavy hair to the side and scratched the back of her neck.

“Officially,” Numair said, “As I said, we know Synthia was dealing with Carthak.”

Daine was nodding. “I knew that already, actually.” Alright, she’d heard or overheard that. Numair really wished he’d been more lucid during their initial meeting.

“In some capacity, he was also dealing with stormwings. These two factors may or may not be related. One theory states that Synthia had access to spells which enabled him to compel Immortals such as stormwings to do his bidding. The second is that he had some sort of agreement,” - Daine’s nose wrinkled - _“agreement_ with or non-magical influence on the stormwings. A bribe, a threat, a treaty of some kind.”

“How could he stand to?” Daine muttered. Numair wondered - here was a girl who had struck a deal with a kraken. Was she simply overlooking that she edged on a double standard? For all that she was powerful she was still thirteen. When he was thirteen he could walk five fathoms down on the riverbed of the Zekoi, and didn’t have the common sense the Hag gave a chicken. Or was she somehow equating stormwings with the raiders that had struck her farm; that could make sense. The delighted cruelty, the human-cunning, even the smell.

Rain smattered suddenly against the window, breaking his train of thought.

“History contains many bad men with repulsive allies,” he replied simply. “And in the case that he compelled them magically, we need to know those spells. We have yet to find any in our libraries, and Synthia’s papers were all missing. Everything from livestock counts to taxation records of his fiefdom to the evidence I found, in letters and financial documents, of his dealings with Carthak. If all had gone to plan, I would have been able to slip out after confirming the crown’s suspicions and alert Alanna. She was standing by to gain enough evidence for a writ of arrest, and would have surprised Synthia and seized all his documents. Instead, both Synthia and his Carthaki contacts both got away and are now warned that Tortall is on their scent. They may be doubly careful, or worse, change their tactics entirely and leave us guessing where the next blow will land. Any questions?”

Daine was silent for a minute, smoothing a hand down Kitten’s flank. She frowned slightly, started to nibble a hangnail again.

Numair began to say, “Stop that,” but she looked up, gray gaze frank, and said:

“Well, why were you caught?”

This was a valid question. Numair did not know why he hadn’t expected it. He was grateful as always for his dark complexion, which hid a blush effectively in low light.

“I was caught snooping,” he said.

“By Lord Synthia?” she asked.

“Ahem,” Numair said. “No, by his, er, maid. I hadn’t realized she’d followed me.”

“Oh, did she suspect you?”

“...No,” Numair admitted. “I think she was as surprised as anything; she dropped a teapot and it smashed and that was when Synthia came in.”

Numair prayed to any god that was listening that Daine did not ask why the maid had followed him upstairs after supper in the first place, then. It was, well - he wouldn’t have actually bedded her, but giving the impression that he was carefree and canoodling with the staff was part of his front as ‘Numair Salmalin’. And he was forced to admit that he probably would've been happy with a bit of necking in the servants’ dining room after everyone was gone, front or no front.

“Anyhow,” he said quickly, “you know the rest of it. They drugged me since they didn’t have enough ability to dampen my magic. That was actually…” he swallowed, felt exposed, “That is the smartest thing you could do to a black robe mage. A powerful enough mage can usually succeed against dampeners with proper training. But a powerful mage, drugged and lacking control, is as much a danger to themselves as those around them. If we didn’t have proof already, it would on its own suggest...well, it suggests that someone with knowledge of myself in particular or black robe mages in general advised Synthia. Poison isn’t his style.”

Like an echo, like a waking dream rolling in with the thunder, Numair heard Ozorne say under the hissing rain, the blanket of memory,"We won't poison anyone unless you ask us to, will we, sweetheart?" and Varice turning her face and laughing as the monsoon rains beaded on her pink veil. And then - months later, Varice pointing out delicacies on a platter, urging them both to taste, to memorize the taste, so they would know when food had been tampered with. Poison was everyone's style in Carthak.

“Numair?” asked Daine. She’d stilled her nail-chewing, her stroking of Kitten, concerned and focused suddenly and entirely on him. “Are you alright? You seemed to go away.” She looked suddenly her age, quite young.

He took a shaky breath, let his hair down and ran his hands through it.

“That is the context, Daine, for what we’re to do for the King in fief Tirragen. It is the home of Lord Synthia’s son, inherited from the late Lady Synthia. We are to see if the son knows aught of the father, and if there are any relevant documents in his lands. Or, that is what I am to do. You are to continue with your studies, and I will see what opportunities for unique lessons we might find in Port Caynn.”

“I thought we were going to the lord’s home?” she asked carefully.

“The estate is a short ride outside the city; it is likely we will see much of the port.”

“Alright then,” said Daine. He got the impression she was treating him gently for some reason, and felt all the worse for it.

“And for the second thing tonight,” he made himself say. “We will have you speak to me solely through your magic while I am in the shape of a hawk.”

He saw her eyes go wide, her hand drop to the hearth in surprise.

“Is it safe for you now?” she asked.

He laughed shortly. “It is. It was safe by our third day in Corus last spring.”

She frowned, tapped a finger on the hearth. “You always tell me not to risk my reserves.”

“My reserves are very deep,” Numair said simply, letting his hands push his hair back and fall to the bed.

Daine stuck her tongue out at him, said, “Aren’t you special, Master Salmalin,” and he felt himself grin in return, feeling lighter.

“Very special, thank you,” he joked. “We’ll meditate for a quarter candle mark, then I’ll make the change,” Numair said, settling across from her on the floor now that his nerves were settled. He didn’t need to say anything else; they slipped into a pattern of breaths. Numair let his mind float, then sharpen. He counted rolls of thunder.

At the allotted time, he began to gather his magic, let it spool upwards and upwards from the deep well of himself. It felt like a spring drawing from the water table; easy and natural, deep and good. He worked until he had a pool of it, a lake. Slowly, slowly, he formed the spell in his mind and drew the magic, sip by sip, into his working. Into his bones.

Kitten trilled in alarm and Numair fluttered back in surprise; in his haste he hit a wing on the bedframe. Daine opened her eyes and her face transformed with awed delight. She was putting her hands out before he could realize he was drawing near to her. He hopped onto her forearm - careful with the talons - and preened to make her laugh. Sternly she brought up a finger and wagged it at him.

“I _knew_ you were a fair strange hawk. Look at this!” She poked at his feathers, gentle and careful not to muss the flight feathers for all her scolding, “You’re far too big and your feathers have no shine to them at all, like - like velvet instead of silk.”

He squawked at her, and thought hard in her direction, _Talk with your mind, only._

She set him down on the floorboards again and she settled back into her meditation stance, back straight, hands resting in her lap. He watched her magic flare. She still used too much for what she needed, but that could be fixed with time, and it wasn’t as if she didn’t have impressive reserves as well.

 _HELLO,_ Daine shouted in his brain, _YOU’RE A BIRD RIGHT NOW SO YOU CAN HEAR ME._

 _Ouch!_ thought Numair, then felt the connection break in her excitement. She was back in a moment, though.

 _Alright,_ he told her, fluttering up to the bed. _Let us multitask. List the sacral bones of the common housecat, in order descending from the spine._

Outside, the storm twisted dizzyingly, excitedly. Numair’s insides felt a bit like that too.

 _Again? Alright. Pelvis, femur, patella,_ Daine began, _tibula is large and forward-facing, fibula thin and behind, tarsal bones, metatarsal bones…?_

 _How many of each tarsal and metatarsal?_ Numair pushed, and let her answer spill into his mind, let the storm spill over the hill country, let himself wear the shape of a bird with slowly relaxing fear. No one here would try to drug and kill him. No one here would beckon him to bed and love him too much to ever let him go.

Tortall, this strange cold country. Daine, this strange and practical girl. Safety. A storm outside that he would not call out to.

They kept it up for the better part of two hours, by his reckoning. Finally Daine yawned, Kitten yawned back, and Daine yawned twice more. Kitten flopped dramatically in Daine’s lap, looking pitiful, as if she hadn’t been napping all this time anyway.

 _That’s enough for tonight,_ Numair said, _turn your back, if you please._

 _I shall preserve your virtue,_ Daine’s voice told him sleepily. He couldn’t tell if he was being teased or not, but she turned herself around to face the fire, mindlessly bopping Kitten on the nose. Kitten wriggled and chirped loudly at the door.

“Yes, yes, we’re going soon, Kit,” Numair heard her say vaguely. She stretched and her spine cracked, and the thunder cracked, and Numair cracked too, until he was not a bird anymore at all. He shivered and went quickly to his clothes; it was getting cold at night now.

Kitten chirped with more urgency and leapt right away from Daine, sniffing delicately at the door, at the keyhole.

Numair frowned.

“Numair?” asked Daine, still looking pointedly at the fire. Numair stopped struggling with doing up the ties on his trousers, pulled on his robe so as to be somewhat clothed, and crossed the room to whip the door open. Kitten nearly tumbled out and Daine was suddenly there to grab her round the middle.

Numair, distracted by Kitten, only caught the smallest glimpse of a booted foot disappearing around the corner. He considered following, but it wasn’t a very quiet hall - men’s voices were coming from the stairs on the opposite end, and a servant was just exiting a room with a chamber pot.

He leaned back in the room and closed the door.

“What was the matter?” Daine asked.

“I didn’t see anyone there,” Numair said. Suspicion wasn’t enough to go on. “Let me get dressed and see you to your room.”

Daine glared. “So you’re worried? Do you think it's something to do with Synthia?”

“I hadn't even thought of that yet," Numair admitted. "It's impossible to tell, but it could be nothing - could be that someone passed by with a tray of lindonberry jam and Kitten smelled it.” He shoved his shirt on, tied the sleeves clumsily shut.

That got Daine to crack a smile at least. Kitten loved lindonberry jam, and would beg mercilessly for it. This had bought enough time for Numair to clothe himself suitably so as not to scandalize anyone, and he put all his courtly manners into offering her an arm for his escort, because she was more likely to pander to one of his jokes than to any perceived protective pampering.

“I’ll take a look around,” he murmured to her in the hall. “But this is an inn of good repute, and we are travelling with a messenger wearing the King’s crest. Even if I am not recognized, your friend will be. And you’ll be more than safe in a room with her.”

Daine rolled her eyes. “So long as she doesn’t kill me first when she realizes that Kitten needs feeding twice in the night.”

Numair laughed and mockingly clutched at his heart, exclaiming, “Only twice now! She doesn’t know how lucky she is.”

Daine smiled. “She’s about to, I guess.”

Numair shook his head. “Luck be with you then,” he said, and left her and Kitten slipping into the room. He went downstairs and walked the perimeter of the barroom, braved the rain to check on Cloud and the horses. Cloud bullied him into giving her a bit of sweetcake from dinner but seemed otherwise unconcerned, which he realized put him oddly at ease.

“I’m relying on your superior judgement,” he told Cloud solemnly. She pretended to eat his shirt.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> \- the messenger's name is Aisha, she told Numair this at one point but he was busy worrying about something and wasn't listening, i blame a faulty POV.
> 
> \- i love a good political story. this isn't that exactly but it's not NOT that. it does explain all the damn talking.
> 
> \- apologies for continued lack of varice/numair/ozorne. I feel i've implied it nice and heavily but idk i promise a good solid story about them at some point, not just like. cracks in numair's repression.


	2. Chapter 2

Port Caynn was the invention of a madman, a fog-soaked sprawl of a city, most of which was more vertical than flat, encircled by fortifications and filled with mud and gold. So many currencies came and went, in fact, that pure gold dust was accepted as payment in most businesses. If it had a slogan, which it was hardly organized enough to manage, it would come down to a debate between “365 taverns, one for every day of the year!” and “More crime than Corus!”. It stank of fish and brine and sizzling cooking fires at the stalls along the thoroughfares and mud and the hoppy beers sailors preferred for how long the kept in their seabound kegs. If Corus was the great meeting ground of the Tortallan empire and beyond, then Port Caynn was the well-placed drain around which every seaman of every profession and nation circled. Here came the traders, the merchants, the escaped slaves and the slavers. Scanra had more thin tidal fjords than open bays, and the Yamanis had their high foreign tariffs, but in Port Caynn each Corus merchant kept a representative, and a K’mir could sell a rug to a Corus-based Copper Isles trader that would end up decorating a sitting room in Carthak within a sixmonth.

Numair pretended that his discomfort with Port Caynn came from the smell or the horrible, steep streets, but truly it just reminded him too strongly of Carthak City in all its gleaming splendour and absolute wretchedness; in the smell of the wrong sea. It was too loud an echo.

He looked to Daine instead, as they emerged from the high hill-pass and Spots began to pick his way down the muddy packed-gravel road. The effect wasn’t as dramatic as the first time she’d seen the sea, but it was her first true port city and she hadn’t seen Corus but the once last spring, most of which she’d kept to the palace. Still her eyes lit, and she squinted at the rare bright sunlight that turned the sea to molten silver.

Midway down the switchback path the messenger paused and so did Daine. Numair caught up, and the messenger turned in her saddle to address him particularly.

“Master Salmalin,” she said, her dark braid whipping in the sharp breeze, her blue cloak snapping behind her. “I must leave you here, in order to report in at the magistrate’s court.”

Numair blinked. But of course that was normal for royal messengers; he had just forgotten.

“Of course,” Numair said. Daine glanced at him like maybe she knew he was bluffing. Damn. “Though after we secure our lodgings we may yet see you there. I too must attend the magistrate’s courts.”

Daine looked a little confused and one eyebrow was lowering like maybe she suspected he was in some sort of trouble with the magistrate. Hurriedly he added, to her, “It’s how Jon or the university may reach me. Any letters they send will go to the King’s representative in Port Caynn.”

What he didn’t add, at least in front of the messenger, was that if Jon or George Cooper had any orders for him, that was where he would receive them. He looked again at the aloof messenger, the sharp Bazhir slope of her nose, the sharpness in her dark eyes, her deft hands. He wondered, fleetingly and in the way Carthak and everything that came after had taught him to wonder, if she too was receiving orders. She was Jon’s personal messenger, after all.

He tried to read her face, but she was a dark silhouette against the blinding white sparks of the sun hitting the waves in the wide bay. And he had never been terribly good at it. Varice had always done it for him.

“Master Salmalin, Apprentice Veralidaine, may the Goddess bless your journey,” she said. “And the dragon,” she added, and Daine smiled, sudden and bright.

“Goddess bless,” Numair murmured in return.

“Goddess bless, Aisha,” Daine said, because of course she knew the girl’s name. In companionable silence the watched her go, and then he and Daine took a different fork in their journey down the hill, finally leaving the quiet summer on the track behind them.

 

The air was soft, misty, threatening real cold later on. Mist was beading on Daine’s wild curls, or raindrops. The tree outside the window was pattering softly, damp and green.

For a moment, he was Arram Draper, thirteen and tired, and it was northern Carthak’s rainy season. Any minute now he needed to get up and sprint in soggy sandals to his first class of the day.

“Numair?” Daine said, her had slipping a little on the wooden windowsill, and in this moment that was not his name, in this moment her voice sounded viscerally like Varice, when Varice was a girl of thirteen and Arram was ten.

Numair let his eyes close again. He could almost feel the weight of his long lashes settling on his cheek. None of these memories were bad. It was all - before things went sour. But somehow they still sat like sickness in his stomach, like vertigo, like touching something frightening and repulsive in the dark. He did not know why his brain did this. He wished he understood the function in order to mitigate it.

“Numair?” Daine said again, and Kitten trilled in concern. Numair kept his eyes closed, pretended partial sleep instead of the embarrassed strangeness of being momentarily lost in time.

“No need to fret, Kotenok,” he said, deliberately distracting Daine with his bad pronunciation of Kitten’s name in Gallan, “Just - just waking up,” he muttered finally, feeling not at all like a responsible teacher and a powerful mage and more like a university student who would really like a cup of wine too early in the afternoon.

Daine had been oddly confident in the city, at least once Numair had admitted that he was unsure about which inn to choose. She took to the search like she chose a campsite along a forest road, staring at swinging carved wooden signs or names painted on a whitewashed wall, sometimes squaring her shoulders and walking right into a front room or pub attached to inns, as Numair and Cloud watched with bemused eyes from the street.

In the end, they wound up in a place Numair had not noticed at all. Daine said, when questioned, that it had a clean stables and pleased horses. As it turned out, that translated well to the general upkeep of a place. Numair mentally added inn-finding to his nebulous list of apprentices' tasks.

The inn was built around a courtyard, with the stables lining each side of the walk up to the front doors, thus setting the structure itself back from the streets. In the courtyard, which their rooms overlooked, orange and lemon trees grew and the surrounding hills were just visible over the blue slate roofs. He wondered by what magic or skill the citrus would be preserved through the winter - though perhaps the sea-currents, warm from the Copper Isles, kept Port Caynn warmer through what inland would be a snowy winter? Perhaps. But it was certainly true that the price was good and the rooms were quiet, clean, fragrant of sandalwood. Kitten had not passed without comment, but the comments boiled down to a lot of exclaiming and then a cook appearing to feed her sweetmeats until they were shown to their rooms, so that was alright.

A small fleet of mousers patrolled the halls and bigroom. They’re been told that the cats were kept out of occupied rooms, but Numair would have been a fool - a bigger fool - to be surprised when a giant orange tabby walked casually across his stomach as he pulled his scattered thoughts together.

“Oof,” he said as the air was punched out of him, along with the last of his oddness. He noticed then that his Gift was drifting, unspooling a bit from his center, reaching out. He frowned and sucked it quickly back in. Last night, too, it had done this. Since he’d begun learning meditation his Gift had not been this unruly.

“I should meditate,” he told Daine, once he had recovered his breath and the orange tabby had thumped to the floor. He’d found, once he’d gotten older, that trying something immediately to alleviate a problem helped his anxious nature overcome itself.

“Don’t let us disturb you,” she replied, resettling Kitten in her lap, who squawked and suckled harder on her bottle.

“Ah, _quth saghira,_ I wouldn’t interrupt your lunch,” Numair grinned at Kitten, eyes already closed again.

When he was done he found that the tomcat had planted itself on his lap.

“Someone brought us some fruits while you were asleep,” Daine said.

The treat was two oranges, sliced in half and sprinkled with a little sugar and cinnamon, grilled gently on a stone near a hearth. Numair had not had an orange in years; Daine had never. She declared the texture strange but loved the fruit, grinned and had Kitten lick her hands to get a taste of the juice. She laughed when Kitten hated it.

Their late afternoon walk to the Courts was quiet, Numair still shaking off his nap and holding Kitten, Daine and Cloud with their heads together like two sisters swaying in step. Spots, uninterested in the city, remained happily tucked into the stables.

It was misting down rain, but it was not enough to permeate their cloaks, just bead on their curls and Cloud’s mane. The cobbles were slippery and the passersby were mostly trying to get where they were going and be done with it.

Numair watched Daine smile up at the gray sky like she was welcoming in the bite of colder weather. Kitten, meanwhile, croaked crankily and tried to burrow further under Numair’s cloak, claws scratching a bit through his shirt and tunic until he brought up a hand and let his fingers whisper a warming spell. Daine, peering into a tea shop’s window, did not notice. But nor did she look like she wanted for a warming spell.

“This place always reminds me of Thak City,” Numair said softly as in the air above them, the bells of the nearest Temple of Mithros clanged out the hour, and seagulls wheeled. He shocked himself. Daine turned away from the shop, hand in Cloud’s shaggy mane. Cloud was glaring at anyone who got close, so even in a busy street they were able to stop fully.

Daine looked at him for a while, gray eyes serious.

“You don’t talk about Carthak a lot,” she said. “But in the same way I don’t talk about the farm, or Galla, all that much.”

Numair was silent. Let her put together whatever connections she would. Let her think of the tower, with its Carthaki rugs, his taste for Carthaki spiced tea. Let her think of her own little Gallan-style shrine to the Goddess, her own tea which she sweetened with elderberry jam in a way most Tortallans thought disgusting. “I thought Carthak was hot,” she said finally, gesturing vaguely, as if to show him the mist. “Like a desert, where Aisha was from.”

Numair did not know how to explain the sheer scale of Carthak. The plains and deserts, the mountains with their misty green tops, populated by goatherders and baboons, the volcanoes and lava flows that met with lush green jungle, and finally the river Zekoi, ever running south into the very heart of the continent.

“It has a rainy season. It’s not a true winter like you’d know from Galla, but it’s pretty wet.”

Daine smiled. “Winter in Galla’s not so bad.”

Numair highly, highly doubted it. Something of that must have shown in his face, because Daine broke her seriousness and exclaimed, “You’re ridiculous! You have no trouble forgetting food for a whole day, or spending hours up on the tower wall looking at the sea or the stars until you’re chilled to the bone, but you’re afraid of a little Gallan winter?”

“Absolutely,” said Numair fervently. “Can you picture me, a cultured by undeniably delicate and inconstant creature, surviving the elements?”

Daine looked at him askance.

“Master Salmalin,” she said slowly, and a little confused but definitely mocking him at least a little, damn, this was what happened when you let someone near him for too long, they picked up his rhetorical habits and used them against him, “Remember I’ve seen you living out of tents, gutting fish for your supper. I’ve _also_ seen you singlehandedly hold off the wards placed on a castle by multiple mages.” Her mouth twisted. She started walking again though, so the danger seemed to have passed. “And now I’ve read more of your books, so I know a little more of what 'undeniably delicate' Master Salmalin was doing that day, and I wish I’d - well, I knew it was taking its toll, you looked like you’d barely survived a bout of marsh fever by the end of it -”

“Thanks.”

“-Argh. Will you talk in circles about yourself like that at the palace when we go for Midwinter? I’d druther not watch.” She stomped ahead.

“Probably,” Numair admitted, following. “But I promise not to do it during lessons, and I give you leave to mock me whenever I’m too ridiculous.”

He could have _sworn_ Cloud snorted at him. And people used to tell him his life was strange. Obviously they had not seen this part of it coming.

Thankfully the Courts now loomed on the crest of the next horrific hill. Up it they trudged, panting, until they were passing through the lively grain market which dominated Magistrate’s Square. Here too were the gallows, hanging empty today.

Numair did not look at them long. He was reminded of the superstition in the Tortallan hill country, where to look too long at an old, old tree, or to tarry under it, meant to risk being possessed by it’s spirit. Paying too much attention to the gallows felt similar.

Daine, too, avoided looking at them. Numair wondered: understandable aversion, or something closer to what he himself felt? That whisper on his back, like a crossroads choice, a kiss of something barely escaped or of something coming.

He felt his own mortality suddenly like a stone in his stomach. Carthak, which he had loved. Carthak, which he had been disturbed by, from which he had recoiled and run. It was here in the misty rain, here in the gallows. It did not have to follow him; Carthak was here in his body, in his blood.

It felt insurmountable. Eventually, Carthak would win. Like a rabbit to a snare, like a hawk to the bait and the waiting hood he would go.

And the worst was the wistfulness. It was unfair; someone was singing a lonely tune for coins at the corner of the square, the bells were ringing, the mist was wrapped around him, in his lungs. And he felt it, that terrible wistfulness. Would he see them before he died? Varice, become such a Carthaki girl in her veils and sandals, despite her fashionable northern dresses and honey-hair. The prince, smiling at the sky, whispering to his birds, just like -

Horrified, he shut his thoughts down. Daine and Ozorne were nothing alike. But he could not look at her as they navigated the grain market and half-heartedly tied Cloud by her lead rope to the horse-posts outside the Courts.

Inside it was a building of stone and heavy timber, a large iron chandelier loaning its waxy light to the mid-afternoon gloom. Numair reached into his shirt and pulled his opal on its chain out into the open. He felt Daine’s eyes on him but simply handed over Kitten and focused on evaluating the general reaction to the dragon instead. Fortunately, Port Caynn had seen many a strange thing.

The opal or the dragonette got them quick attention from a clerk in the bustle, and Numair quickly ordered his correspondence. Daine was standing on tip-toes, peering around. “I don’t see Aisha,” she said. Numair glanced around, but did not see the Bazhir messenger either. He shrugged, still feeling off-footed.

The clerk returned, bowing and handing him a stack of scrolls, bulkier than he’d expected. Daine’s hands appeared in his vision and took up half the load. Kitten, relegated to the floor briefly, bit the edge of Daine’s cloak and held it like a toddler clinging to a mother’s skirts as they walked in silence outside.

Cloud whickered. Perhaps Numair was projecting, now used to knowing Cloud’s moods through overheard half-conversations with Daine, but Cloud looked annoyed with the damp.

“Oh, don’t be dramatic,” Daine scolded over the noise of grain market criers. They set out and she mostly kept up a chattered conversation with Cloud for the duration of the walk to the inn, leaving Numair feeling vaguely left out but free to observe the surroundings. Two men called out to him - “How much for the dragon!” - but fortunately one spoke Yamani and the other Tyran, so Daine took no notice. Numair gave them his best thunderous stare, the one that used his height and his dark eyes like he normally did not. He’d learned it from Ozorne, who had been a proficient. The calls promptly stopped.

Again ensconced in their set of rooms, Numair silently set to reading.

From Jon’s clerk assigned to Carthaki matters, a foreign policy note. As Daine lit the candles from the lighting-taper which hung by the fireplace, scolding Kitten gently when she tried to touch a flame, Numair read,

 

_Salmalin,_

_Grain shortage in the Siraj Valleys region now reaching Thak City, this month leading to small riots in the lower town and near the arena. Put down by palace guard._

_Landslides and flash flooding early in wet season along the Zekoi, from Belkech to Al-Amid. Refugee influx possible, though unconfirmed._

_Some talk around a coalition of Thak’s Gate and Thak City priests petitioning at the Imperial Palace, grievances unknown._

_Crime low in lower town of Thak City; many young men now given chance to join Imperial Army in the south instead of penalties or gladiatorial service when facing criminal charges._

_1st Prince’s birthday celebration likely to alleviate tension in coming weeks._

_2 new red robes confirmed at university: Achmed Adiba, Tristan Staghorn._

 

In return, Numair wrote:

 

_Suggestions:_

  * _Offer lower grain tariffs in exchange for redrawn fishing rights between Port Kreswitch and Pearlmouth._
  * _Offer refugee aid upon emigration to Tortall._
  * _Please specify further on grievances of priests; which priests/temples?_



 

He took a red wax taper off the desk and melted one end of it on one of Daine’s lit candles. Carefully he allowed the wax to drip and form a seal, to which he pressed the signet ring the king had given him as Numair Salmalin: a wand across a crown.

It reminded him too well of another seal. Maybe it was meant to. There was a reason Jon’s clerk wrote to him about Carthak. There was a reason he was kept close, tucked away by the sea within an easy ride of the king’s own Spymaster.

Under her breath, Daine was singing that Gallan song to Kitten, teaching her to play patty-cake with her forepaws. It amazed him, and then he felt terrible for being amazed, how easily Daine was acting as a mother of sorts to Kitten. Surely it was hard, entertaining her all day, even when Numair sometimes took over here and there. He could barely muster the energy to reach for the next scroll.

This next was from the university, and was thick with some poor assistant scribe’s careful copies of tracts of text. Numair, curious, stopped himself after some light skimming and flipped to the note. Master Caradog wished to have Master Salmalin’s expertise and opinion on these excerpts, and whether they might prove useful in understanding the spells which had broken open the realms of the Immortals.

“Ispeki nam tortik - pekr skor _ei_ …! Stanet vsem nam vecel _ei_...!” Daine chanted softly by the window, still playing that familiar children’s game with one such Immortal, who despite her appearance seemed far too normal and needy to be a being from another plane. She’d only just figured out the double two-hand clap and already Daine was starting her on criss-cross versions.

He tried to remember what Daine had said about her mother, or what Onua had let slip - how she had looked not like Daine, blonde and pale like a Scanran perhaps. He imagined them, Sarra and her little Sarrasri shadow on some Gallan cottage floor while the bread baked, playing the clapping game with nimble hands. He watched Kitten get her first criss-cross, flushing a pleased pink.

A deep and awful tenderness added itself to the mix in his stomach as he watched Kitten’s intent little face, as he saw the absence of generations, the three of them stranded refugees themselves, trailing the loose threads of lives ripped out like so much bad embroidery. How much for the dragon, indeed? How about all of my terrible magic down your throat, friend?

He shook his head, tried to shake the echo, the old ruthlessness that he was never sure of - was it his own, or had he borrowed it? The problem was, he was always like this with the ones he cared for. It was a feeling he associated with a few too many memories of a time when a single strained smile from Varice was  enough to bring both him and Ozorne bearing down, their fingers sparking. When a bit of vicious slander was spread about Ozorne at mealtime, and Arram and Varice wore matching, very sharp smiles and everyone knew what it meant.

And, too - he had to admit, he had to, that they too had been like this about him. When they saw some slight towards him, their combined might so quickly made it go away. Their combined hands so softly pushed him back into bed. Their perfumed sleeves would even slip over his eyes, if there was a scene in the street they knew would upset him.

He swallowed their ruthless love down and down.

“What - what do you think of these?” Numair asked, interrupting the game. Kitten looked upset until Numair handed a frowning Daine the scrolls and note, and took up the clapping for himself, trying to imitate the words Daine had been using.

Daine scanned the scrolls, still a little slow at reading Tortallan letters in a handwriting she wasn’t used to. Numair patiently made up nonsense rhyming phrases, cycling through his university-taught languages, since he was sure he’d been murdering the Gallan. His Yamani was out of practice.

“I don’t know why you’re askin’ me,” Daine said, finally setting the scrolls down. “I don’t have the Gift, an’ I definitely don’t have university book learnin’.” Her accent got stronger when she was upset. Numair leaned over and knocked his knuckles gently against her skull.

“You don’t, though if you wanted it we could arrange it.” Daine made a face, and he laughed before he could stop himself. “I want your opinion, Daine, because -” he began to tick off his fingers, “You are one of very few people who have actually seen the spell or spells in action, you have _spoken_ to a being who had just passed between the realms, you’ve spoken to multiple Stormwings, you can sense the coming of Immortals in attack or peace, and you’ve read a lot of my books and observed my use of Gift up close. Also, I value your opinion, observation, and common sense.”

Daine sighed, rolling her eyes but no longer so ill at ease. “I have so many things to say to that. For one, you should tell Cloud, who insists I have no common sense ‘tall. I would dearly love to never speak to a Stormwing again, ‘cept to send my hallo’s as I loose an arrow. And observing your Gift up close has, how d’ya say, _limited application,_ now doesn’t it? Cause I did read your books, or a couple of ‘em, and you don’t do none of your spells proper-like.”

Numair put a hand to his heart, as if struck a blow. “I’m very proper!” he exclaimed, before remembering he was acting like Daine was his peer and his age, a friend not a student. Hag’s dice, but it was _fun_. But so was not failing as a teacher, so.

Daine, of course, just laughed at him.

“Well,” she said carefully after a silence. “I dunno what you think but - I don’t think what we saw at the Swoop this spring was like anything they describe in the letter.” Her hands fiddled together.

“I agree,” Numair said with a tired smile, and felt like maybe he and Daine were getting somewhere after all, even if the university mages weren't.

“What happens tomorrow?” Daine asked over the crackling fire, the dripping eaves and soft wind in the lemon-tree branches in the dark courtyard.

Numair had already begun to read the final letter, the one from George Cooper. This was fortunate, for it held the answer to Daine’s question.

“Tomorrow, we will receive an invitation from Lord Synthia’s eldest son,” he said.

Daine raised her eyebrows, but didn’t say anything. She did spend some time that night oiling her bowstrings. While her bow was hardly going to be the tool of choice going into tomorrow’s meeting, Numair felt oddly soothed.

 

He dreamed that night. The sea he saw like he was a hawk. It was not the busy, cold waters of Caynn Bay but the shallows off the cliffs of his tower near the Swoop. With his hawk’s eyes he peered and the bright shallows, the deeper green of seagrass fields, the dark rocks, the arches of stone and the small sandy beaches. He was not worrying that he was the hawk. Daine was there, the root of the tower. Daine was there, watching out for him. Maybe it was because there had been so many skirmishes and battles this spring, when the two of them were just getting acquainted. Anyway, it was always his back she settled at, aim ready and true, when things were bad. Like Alanna did for Jon, like Tahoi and Onua. Oh, certainly they all had his back when it counted, but Daine chose him first and she was just a kid, but she was tougher than anyone and so kind that people thought she was soft, but she was a sharp edge just like he was.

So, he was dreaming as the hawk but it was fine because Daine was gleaning wild berries with Cloud or drawing up well-water or frowning at her books. She whistled as she gleaned sometimes, when she knew they had enough meat and it wouldn’t matter if she scared away a rabbit, and she was not very good but he wished she would teach him the tunes and the words too.

As he dreamed he became a man standing on the little round balcony atop the tower, feeling small and content. As he watched the treeline Daine whistled a Gallan tune, whistled to a goshawk. As he watched the treeline he was bemused and warmed to see that the sea was stretching up like the playful corner of a blanket lifted, up up above his trees. Through it the sunlight sparkled and fish swam.

“What’s this then, Numair?” said Daine beside him, her arms full of late garlic from the woods. She too looked at the sea as it twisted itself gently towards them. Once they were in its shadow Numair was dazzled by the way it refracted the light. The seawater bent down and wrapped around the tower like a mother swaddling an infant. Daine looked at him, mildly surprised. Her hair floated out around her head like a mane.

Numair had forgotten to do the underwater-spell but it was alright anyhow. The water was not even so cold. It was warm from the sun, in fact. A little rock goby fluttered to a stop in front of Daine’s face and she giggled and Numair could hear her as if they were merely in a sort of windy day. The sun was so bright through the greenish water.

“There!” Numair exclaimed without quite meaning to; he startled the rock goby, which darted into the safety of Daine’s gently-waving hair. “See, that shadow looks like a seaturtle.”

“She’s not saying anything,” Daine told him, “She’s busy.”

Numair smiled at the fish in Daine’s hair. “That’s a rock goby,” he said.

“That’s Numair. He knows what to call you,” Daine told the rock goby. Then, “No, you shouldn’t. It’ll go back soon.”

Numair looked to the next fish, a snook, sheepshead, yellowtail - he told her all the species names he could see. Daine told him what the fish were saying, which she rarely did when he was awake.

Through the rippling water he could barely make out two figures sitting on the ocean’s horizon - for only a little of the ocean was needed to wrap the tower. They were larger than life, like statues of Mithros, and straddled the horizon like it was a bench. They were too young; they would be older now, like Numair was older. But Varice’s thick honeyblond hair was still coiled in her girlish braids and Ozorne was smiling and picking at a broken buckle on one of his sandals. Then the light shifted and he could not see them. In a dream, Numair thought, this meant that they were not in fact there, anymore.

The sea turtle circled back, and Numair watched the arch of her climb and descent through the water. On the sea turtle’s back clung Kitten, who pushed off to swim awkwardly towards them, Daine laughing and holding out her arms, going up on tip-toes while three more rock gobies snuck into her hair. Kitten latched onto her arms and chirped loudly at Numair.

“Be good,” Daine admonished. She whistled three notes and the warm water swirled around them. It was so calm; it was so beautiful. It was so kind of he sea to leave its bed just for them.

Kitten whistled the same three notes in her odd dragonette noises, but then she kept going, carefully sounding out the Gallan tune Daine had been whistling earlier as she gathered the garlic. Kitten whistled it louder and louder until Numair was afraid that it would wake him up, and then it had.

He sat up, dizzy, in the shared living space their two rooms had provided. He was on a sort of low padded bench by the fireplace.

By the window, Daine was feeding Kitten her goat’s milk and butter mixture and whistling the Gallan tune.

“Did I fall asleep?” Numair asked, stupidly. "Again? I just got up." He was well aware that had been a dream. It had been so pleasant, too. “I’m sorry, I didn’t help with anything, did I?”

“I haven’t done much but try to tire out Kitten before breakfast,” Daine replied easily. “I just lit the fire. I’ve seen how quickly you get cold.”

“Ah, I apologize, I at least could have done that.”

She smiled. “I got along with just a flint just fine before you came along.”

“Even so.”

Daine shrugged and looked at him instead of Kitten. “Well, some folks need to recover after travel. My ma was - was just the same. Needed sleep and couldn’t stomach anything too sweet or two spiced if we’d been traveling all day.”

Numair just nodded. He had parents somewhere in Tyra still. Most likely, alive and well. It would have been risky to reach out to them, and mostly that was a secret relief. He collected Daine's stories instead.

His mouth tasted off, like sleep, like that scent that rode ahead of a thunderstorm. Again he felt dizzy, listless.

He’d been feeling fine this spring, this early spring. His life had been fine. But now the season was turning again and he was still off-kilter; he felt like he was in a daze, like when you travel for days in the cold but only get sick once you’re someplace warm and safe, and your body knows it can let go.

He didn’t feel particularly safe, exactly. And nothing had really even changed, except for Daine and Kitten and an eventful spring. But it was hardly the most eventful spring, hardly the hardest time of his life. And yet, he felt like he’d been coasting, like he’d taken a punch and it had been numb with shock for a few years now but the feeling was creeping back in. For all that he was sleeping so much, it felt like something deep and old inside him, some core he had carelessly dismissed as Arram Draper, as a past self, was twitching its fingers. Was sniffing the air. Was putting a hand on Numair’s elbow feather-light and whispering in between the raindrops, _I’m sorry I’ve taken so long._

He smiled weakly at Daine, and hoped nothing showed on his face.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> \- updated Jul. 11/18 bc I forgot to add the last few paragraphs, whoops.
> 
> \- i thought way too long about whether there would be access to oranges in Tortall; mostly no, except as a delicacy. Much more common in Carthak, so Numair probs misses them.
> 
> \- since there's no medieval-fantasy-americas in the Tortall verse i guess no one has potatoes or tomatoes or corn either sorry i don't make the rules (also there's no way i'd manage to adhere to no potatoes so it's just snark with no sticking power, i'm sorry)
> 
> \- unrelatedly, trying to write numair POV feels like getting really drunk and then watching The Cosmos

**Author's Note:**

> \- the messenger's name is Aisha, she told Numair this at one point but he was busy worrying about something and wasn't listening, i blame a faulty POV.
> 
> \- i love a good political story. this isn't that exactly but it's not NOT that. it does explain all the damn talking.
> 
> \- apologies for continued lack of varice/numair/ozorne. I feel i've implied it nice and heavily but idk i promise a good solid story about them at some point, not just like. cracks in numair's repression.


End file.
